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Hysterectomy Post-Op: Mom Thinks She's Funny

Posted May 09 2013 7:10am

This involves information about female reproductive organs and even a few lines about bladders thrown in for good measure. So...just warning you. It's also not clever or funny - I apologize for that. I also apologize for the really weird formatting going on in this post. Blogger is being wonky.

On Monday morning, mom and I headed down to Birmingham for my hysterectomy. I don't know what all happened; things happen very quickly in hospitals. I know I was scolded a few times. Rachel Tanner, the OG Hospital Rebel. I also like to crack jokes in real life. Guess who doesn't like it when I crack jokes? The hospital. Anyway...I just know I woke up in the 2nd recovery room. All I remember thinking is, "I HAVE to get back to my hospital room," because if you know me at all, you know that recovery rooms are my own personal versions of hell. I'm not sure why. It was pretty empty. So, as the nurse would later tell everyone, I was trying to sit up on the gurney and act "as fancy as possible." Somehow I thought that talking about bifocals would get me back to a hospital room faster. They had a specific number of hours they had to keep me in recovery, but I guess I didn't understand that at the time.After I was finally allowed to go back to my hospital room, I kept dozing off. I drifted off to sleep A LOT but was promptly awoken by searing pain every. Single. Time. Mom thought it'd be funny to take pictures. I was drifting off because I was trying to not just stay in a supine position forever. It didn't work out very well. And I'm a little bit bummed that I barely vlogged about it. That's how much pain I was in - I couldn't even vlog. And y'all know how I always have to have a camera. I still haven't had a good chunk of sleep since surgery and it's now Thursday morning. That's why it's nearly 6AM and I'm still awake. Painkillers can only do so much.Mom had no issues taking pictures of her sweet, sweet daughter trying to sleep, but she refused to hold the camera so I could vlog about it. MOM!

Granted, I would've done the same thing if the roles had been reversed. And yes, all of those drinks are mine. The first meal or two after surgery = liquids. They didn't make me do that. Sometimes you just need chocolate milk.

Things were a little different than I'd anticipated.1) I wasn't allowed to move the day of surgery. Even just raising the head of my bed more than a few times was frowned upon. The procedure was at maybe 9:30 AM and I wasn't allowed to get up and move around until 5 AM the next day. I knew that it'd hurt really badly to move but I also knew from experience that the sooner you get moving, the sooner you feel a little better. Nope. 2) They even had me on a catheter for a long time so I had no real reason to be up and about. As someone who has had multiple surgical procedures involving my bladder...I've never had this negative of an experience with a catheter. Normally, it's a relief to not have to get up and pee every 5 seconds. (They made me turn my InterStim off for a day or two.) But for some reason, this time it just made me feel like my bladder was 100% full the entire time. It didn't hurt necessarily...but it's kind of like if you're constantly nauseated. It's annoying to the point where it almost hurts.3) It was my first time having a legitimate pain pump. I've gotta say...not a big fan of the morphine. It made me hallucinate and do all kinds of weird stuff. I've had tons of different drugs over the years and have experienced some extreme side effects but for some reason this felt worse. It was also my very first time having morphine. Demerol and Dilaudid are definitely still my favorites for short term surgery-related pain. 4) I CAN'T BREATHE. I've been using the spirometer like crazy. (For those who don't know, the spirometer is that weird plastic thing that looks like the picture below.)I have no idea why I can't breathe but it makes sleeping troublesome. I also know my oxygen levels were relatively low, even when I stopped being a baby and left the itchy air tubes up my nose. 5) The MBRBAWAL rule still applies for 1 to 2 weeks after surgery. I just invented that term. Mostly BedRest But Also Walking a Little. I thought this would be an easy little procedure like having a colonoscopy. My bad. It's by no means the worst surgery ever (not by any stretch of the imagination), but it's no colonoscopy. I thought I was going to be able to get up and do stuff. So I'm hoping that this post makes sense because I'm a little dopey. If this is the first blog post of mine that you're reading - I promise that they're not usually this awful.So I was there from Monday around 6:30 AM and I got back home around 1 or 2PM on Wednesday. I had to have 2 IVs placed and I was only stuck ONCE for each IV. I was astounded. My sweet stepmom and little sister came by but the surgery took longer than expected. I hope they didn't drive all the way to Birmingham just for that, but I'm glad mom had the company. I hope that my mom and stepmom mombonded and that Claire didn't get too terribly bored. I love them all.Want to know something about hysterectomies? They hurt! I know - it could've been a lot worse. MUCH worse. I'll write about the exact type that I had done later this week. Thank goodness for laparoscopic organ removal. I even have HD pictures of my innards and a few short video clips. I kind of want to put special effects (like the noise of a garage door closing or something) on the clips and send them back to my doctor and ask what all the weird noises were. The video clips and pictures are actually really interesting and not THAT gross. Maybe I'll put some special effects on them and put them online. Hysterectomy: The HD/3D Experience! Some people say that's crossing a line, but I had a few people ask me to put pictures of my Endometriosis lesions on here before. So who knows. I'll be staying at my mom's house for at least a week so she can take care of me. Feel free to visit, call, text, email, message, anything. Just let me know beforehand if you want to come visit!-----------------------------------------------------------------If you have ANY questions at all (whether I know you in real life or you just randomly found this page), feel free to message me, leave me a comment, etc. I'll gladly answer any questions to be best of my ability. I know that this topic may be extremely boring to some people, but it's not to others.Some of the upcoming posts in the next month or so (sprinkled throughout posts about other topics) will be about...- People's kindness before/during/after surgery- My surgeon and why he's a cut (ha!) above the rest. - A vlog about the whole thing, if I was even able to get more than 3 seconds of video. I honestly have no idea what I was able to capture.- The pictures and video clips. Maybe. I haven't peeked at the clips yet but if I remember correctly, they just show the after effects of cutting stuff out - none of the cool stuff like him actually detaching pieces.- An explanation of the type that I had vs the other types that exist.- A post (along with a short vlog) about the sleep study and nap study that I had LAST week in Nashville.- The emotional effects of the surgery. (Surprisingly, I feel far more relieved than I feel sad. The original surgery video post where I was really upset? I'm not over it, but I'm definitely now seeing the brighter side of things.)I put the list on here so people could know if I already plan to answer questions, etc. If you want to know anything else...I'm pretty open about all of it. This blog originally started out as one about my health and trying to help people understand what it's like to live in a world where your nutrition levels and medicines govern and lead, so I may try and keep it that way. It was called A Brand New Set of Wings back then. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Looks like I'm back on Blogger to stay. It helps to have creative family members like my cousin Beth over at http://loveyoumuches.com/ . She (and her parents) also brought me some sweet stuff! Which, again, I'll post later. Taylor and I have a few videos built up in our vlog arsenal so even though we won't see each other A LOT this month, we'll still be putting out vlogs. You can now sleep soundly. You can find us at http://www.youtube.com/user/HeyHeyRayTay